


The Ysian Expansion

by perphesone



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: M/M, Pre-Relationship, Tenderness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-22
Updated: 2019-07-22
Packaged: 2020-07-10 11:30:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,247
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19905031
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/perphesone/pseuds/perphesone
Summary: Delegates from the Ysian system arrive on DS9, requiring a strict curfew on the promenade to accommodate their periodic expansion to a low-density state. Odo takes it upon himself to make sure Quark abides by that curfew.





	The Ysian Expansion

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tooberjoober](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tooberjoober/gifts).



> Written for a tumblr prompt, "things you said at 1am," suggested by tooberjoober/spocksgotemotions.

“What do you think you’re doing, Odo!?” cried Quark, staring imploringly up at the tall figure looming over him. “It’s nowhere _near_ closing time yet!”

“Tonight it is,” said Odo gruffly, glowering down at him in kind.

“On whose orders?” Quark squared up his shoulders and stood up tall, feeling his Gorsican leather boots crinkle around his toes when he lifted his heels off the ground. As he rose up to look Odo in the eyes, he watched Odo elongating himself, stretching away – and wisely so – out of the reach of Quark’s grinding teeth.

Then, Odo curled in over himself like a stray tendril escaping a plate of _gaght_ until his face was a breath away from Quark’s. Quark refused to be the one to pull away, even when he felt Odo’s nose _squishing_ into his own.

“Mine,” growled Odo, his pale eyes flashing.

“I will not,” said Quark firmly, “close my bar before closing time. It’s absurd! My customers are expecting four more hours of drinking and dabo, and I intend to give it to them.”

“Not tonight,” said Odo, “or any other night until the Ysian delegate has left the station.” Odo narrowed his eyes to slits and gave one final, threatening push against Quark’s nose before he drew back and compressed himself into his familiar Bajoran dimensions. “That means _everyone out,”_ he announced to the bar, “unless you want to spend the night in the brig. You don’t have to go to your quarters, but you can’t stay on the promenade.”

Quark helplessly watched as his patrons flowed out of the bar in a grumbling mass despite his insistence that they should stay for one more round.

“Now, look what you’ve done,” he sneered, turning on Odo again once they were left alone in the bar – he’d even ushered Quark’s _employees_ out, and now who was going to wash all those half-finished glasses of synth-ale?

Odo looked around obligingly from left to right. “Hm,” he grunted approvingly. “It looks to me like I’ve done my job.”

Quark sniffed derisively and resigned himself to gathering up the abandoned glasses. Once he had four of them tucked into the crook of his arm, he turned around and saw that all the others, in a matter of seconds, had been neatly lined up along the bar.

Odo did not appear to have moved.

And yet.

Quark narrowed his eyes. “You did that,” he accused.

Odo grunted noncommittally, holding his arms crossed over his chest as usual.

Quark grabbed a washcloth from the bin hidden under the bar and started to wipe off the tables. If they had to be empty, they might as well be clean. “I don’t understand what’s so special about the Ysians. Why should they take priority over the profit-earning rights of the good, hard-working business owners of this station?”

“The _good, hard-working_ business owners of this station have all _agreed_ to close their establishments before the oh-one-hundred hours curfew.”

“I’m sure you had to work very hard to convince Garak to turn away all those midnight customers at the clothiers. An oh-one-hundred hours curfew is discriminatory against proprietors of bars and nightclubs,” Quark argued, snapping the washcloth across the width of a round table.

“How fortunate for you that it will only be enforced for three days, until the Ysians are off the station.”

When Quark glanced up and met Odo’s eyes, he had the funniest feeling that Odo was trying to comfort him. Well, if that was the case, then he was doing a terrible job. Three days’ profits was nothing to leave to the grubs.

“Tell it to my wallet,” said Quark dismissively. As he finished up the tables, he waited to hear the telltale sound of the front door sliding open and shut. It never came. After tossing the spent washcloth into the matter recycler, he stood up with both hands flat on the bar, watching Odo – who hadn’t moved a micron. “Well, I’m closed,” Quark said. “You can go now.”

“I can’t,” said Odo, shaking his head minutely. “It’s oh-one-thirteen hours now. The Ysians will already have started to expand on the promenade.”

“I still don’t understand why they can’t keep it in their quarters,” said Quark.

“The promenade is the only part of the station large enough to accommodate the Ysians at their natural density. And periodic expansion to that density is a biological imperative.”

“Huh.” Quark stalked out from behind the bar, peering at Odo, who was staring resolutely at the wall. If he didn’t know any better, he’d think Odo had gotten himself stuck at the bar during the Ysians’ expansion on _purpose_. “Speaking of biological imperatives, Odo, you’re starting to look a little wobbly.”

“I assure you –”

“Save it,” said Quark, cutting him off with a quelling hand. “I’ll get you a bucket.”

When he got back to the front of the bar, empty ice bucket in hand, Odo was staring at him with an odd, wide-eyed look, his mouth just barely open.

“Don’t worry, it’s clean,” joked Quark. Of course, Odo didn’t crack a smile. Quark wasn’t sure he knew how.

“You keep a bucket here?” asked Odo.

Quark looked at him blankly. “Odo, it’s a bar. Of course I – oh. _Oh._ You thought – ”

“Whatever you’re about to say – ”

“Odo, you thought I kept this here for _you.”_

“I thought no such thing.”

Odo was working so hard to avoid meeting Quark’s gaze that his eyes had drifted vaguely sideways.

“I like you, Odo, but I don’t like you that much.”

“I don’t like you very much, either, Quark.”

Quark felt himself smile as he approached, gingerly placing the ice bucket on the table closest to Odo. Bending at the waist, he held his wrists together in supplication. “If you and I are agreeing on something, it must be a _very_ bad day for business. Now, go ahead,” he said, retreating to the bar where he still had a row of glasses to clean. “I won’t look.”

He dutifully turned his eyes down to his work, listening carefully until the only sounds remaining were the rush of the faucet and the rub of his own hands at work. He took three deep breaths, then dried off his hands and crossed the room to collect the bucket. Inside, sure enough, Odo had been reduced to a few measures of slime, glinting in the light as he shifted and swirled.

Out on the promenade, the Ysians had become truly vaporous. The dim, shimmering deluge of Ysian particles on the other side of the front windows reminded Quark of Ferenginar’s perpetual rain.

Remembering home always put his lobes back into place. As he carried Odo through the bar to a safe place in his back office, his mind was teeming with ways to make up for lost profits. Clearing away a space on his desk and slotting Odo into place beside his bust of the Blessed Exchequer, he made a note to charge him for the bucket as soon as he was solid again. After all, he couldn’t in good faith serve customers drinks out of an ice bucket that had once held a sentient being, much less a shapeshifter like Odo. How could he ever be certain all the residue had been removed and accounted for? Even Odo would have to understand.

Not that he planned to _stop_ using that bucket to serve customers – but Odo didn’t have to know about a little thing like that.


End file.
